I've said this in a couple other threads, but I don't believe that gun control is going to get any traction in Congress. Some Democrats will push for it, some other Republicans will table it, some pro-gun control folks like myself will cry foul, and yet another Congress will pass without any gun control measures seeing the light of day.

But here's one thing that maybe we can start doing: better educate ourselves on gun violence, so we can stop stabbing in the dark as to what we can better do to mitigate it.

The problem is that for a couple decades now, the government has not been able to produce any information on gun violence because the NRA has been threatening war if Congress failed to choke off all funding for gun-related research.

The CDC and NIH used to conduct research for decades, but around the time of the late 90s, the NRA became so powerful it was able to prevent these agencies from granting funds to researchers on those topics. McClatchy DC:

Quote:

The CDC and NIH award billions in grants. They fund research into cancer, brain injury, tobacco use, obesity, AIDS, abortion, hearing loss, allergies, infectious diseases, back pain and virtually everything else related to human health. But gun violence is the one area that carries that specific language. The effect has been to limit federal funding into research that could be used to shape policy.

This is irresponsible. We pass hundreds of gun-related laws across the country every few years. Like all laws, we should be able to research the impact of the laws we pass, so we can make decisions based on more than pure ideology.

Anyway, there's a ton of stories on this, but here's a really good one from last year in the Times.

In the wake of the shootings in Tucson, the familiar questions inevitably resurfaced: Are communities where more people carry guns safer or less safe? Does the availability of high-capacity magazines increase deaths? Do more rigorous background checks make a difference?

The reality is that even these and other basic questions cannot be fully answered, because not enough research has been done. And there is a reason for that. Scientists in the field and former officials with the government agency that used to finance the great bulk of this research say the influence of the National Rife Association has all but choked off money for such work.

“We’ve been stopped from answering the basic questions,” said Mark Rosenberg, former director of the National Center for Injury Control and Prevention, part of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was for about a decade the leading source of financing for firearms research.

Chris Cox, the N.R.A.’s chief lobbyist, said his group had not tried to squelch genuine scientific inquiries, just politically slanted ones.

“Our concern is not with legitimate medical science,” Mr. Cox said. “Our concern is they were promoting the idea that gun ownership was a disease that needed to be eradicated.”

The amount of money available today for studying the impact of firearms is a fraction of what it was in the mid-1990s, and the number of scientists toiling in the field has dwindled to just a handful as a result, researchers say.

The dearth of money can be traced in large measure to a clash between public health scientists and the N.R.A. in the mid-1990s. At the time, Dr. Rosenberg and others at the C.D.C. were becoming increasingly assertive about the importance of studying gun-related injuries and deaths as a public health phenomenon, financing studies that found, for example, having a gun in the house, rather than conferring protection, significantly increased the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.

Alarmed, the N.R.A. and its allies on Capitol Hill fought back. The injury center was guilty of “putting out papers that were really political opinion masquerading as medical science,” said Mr. Cox, who also worked on this issue for the N.R.A. more than a decade ago.

Initially, pro-gun lawmakers sought to eliminate the injury center completely, arguing that its work was “redundant” and reflected a political agenda. When that failed, they turned to the appropriations process. In 1996, Representative Jay Dickey, Republican of Arkansas, succeeded in pushing through an amendment that stripped $2.6 million from the disease control centers’ budget, the very amount it had spent on firearms-related research the year before.

“It’s really simple with me,” Mr. Dickey, 71 and now retired, said in a telephone interview. “We have the right to bear arms because of the threat of government taking over the freedoms that we have.”

The Senate later restored the money but designated it for research on traumatic brain injury. Language was also inserted into the centers’ appropriations bill that remains in place today: “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”

The prohibition is striking, firearms researchers say, because there are already regulations that bar the use of C.D.C. money for lobbying for or against legislation. No other field of inquiry is singled out in this way.

In the end, researchers said, even though it is murky what exactly is allowed under this provision and what is not, the upshot is clear inside the centers: the agency should tread in this area only at its own peril.

“They had a near-death experience,” said Dr. Arthur Kellermann, whose study on the risks versus the benefits of having guns in the home became a focal point of attack by the N.R.A.

In the years since, the C.D.C. has been exceedingly wary of financing research focused on firearms. In its annual requests for proposals, for example, firearms research has been notably absent. Gail Hayes, spokeswoman for the centers, confirmed that since 1996, while the agency has issued requests for proposals that include the study of violence, which may include gun violence, it had not sent out any specifically on firearms.

“For policy to be effective, it needs to be based on evidence,” said Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, who had his C.D.C. financing cut in 1996. “The National Rifle Association and its allies in Congress have largely succeeded in choking off the development of evidence upon which that policy could be based.”

Private foundations initially stepped into the breach, but their attention tends to wax and wane, researchers said. They are also much more interested in work that leads to immediate results and less willing to finance basic epidemiological research that scientists say is necessary to establishing a foundation of knowledge about the connection between guns and violence, or the lack thereof.

The National Institute of Justice, part of the Justice Department, also used to finance firearms research, researchers said, but that money has also petered out in recent years. (Institute officials said they hoped to reinvigorate financing in this area.)

Stephen Teret, founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, estimated that the amount of money available for firearms research was a quarter of what it used to be. With so much uncertainty about financing, Mr. Teret said, the circle of academics who study the phenomenon has fallen off significantly.

After the centers’ clash with the N.R.A., Mr. Teret said he was asked by C.D.C. officials to “curtail some things I was saying about guns and gun policy.”

Mr. Teret objected, saying his public comments about gun policy did not come while he was on the “C.D.C. meter.” After he threatened to file a lawsuit against the agency, Mr. Teret said, the officials backed down and gave him “a little bit more leeway.”

C.D.C. financing for research on gun violence has not stopped completely, but it is now mostly limited to work in which firearms are only a component.

The centers also ask researchers it finances to give it a heads-up anytime they are publishing studies that have anything to do with firearms. The agency, in turn, relays this information to the N.R.A. as a courtesy, said Thomas Skinner, a spokesman for the centers.

Invariably, researchers said, whenever their work touches upon firearms, the C.D.C. becomes squeamish. In the end, they said, it is often simply easier to avoid the topic if they want to continue to be in the agency’s good graces.

Dr. Stephen Hargarten, professor and chairman of emergency medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, used to direct a research center, financed by the C.D.C., that focused on gun violence, but he said he had now shifted his attention to other issues.

Countries that allow citizens to arm themselves to the teeth are not any safer either.

What countries do that? Please list them instead of asserting a generality. I only know of Switzerland, with civilianss armed to the teeth. Yet, it's pretty darn safe there with it's low gun homicide rate.

What countries do that? Please list them instead of asserting a generality. I only know of Switzerland, with civilianss armed to the teeth. Yet, it's pretty darn safe there with it's low gun homicide rate.

Meh Its just more gibberish from the leaning left, that has know idea WTF they are talking about. you cant get through to them

you assume I want to use the Swiss as a model for something. I don't. I am pointing to the Swiss to show your premise is crap.

The Swiss can and should be easily dismissed as an aberration based on all the things we discussed earlier.

How you think the Swiss disprove any trends of a world that doesn't come close to sharing its nearly-uniformly rich population and the absurd defense arrangement of a country smaller than New York City is evident of how hollow the argument you're making is.

The militia state part? Actually I was addressing the points you made in that response and YOU didn't mention it.

When you're using phrases like "only" and "just," it's wise to include all the major dissenting arguments, and not just cherry pick the arguments that seem like the least rhetorically effective.

Good to see you've come around to acknowledging it, though.

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Originally Posted by AustinChief

You are trying to get people here to swallow the idea that teh Swiss are less like their Europeans neighbors than WE are.

Swing and a miss.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AustinChief

Nice dodge you ****ing weasel. You have stated that gun violence is an epidemic because millions of people like yourself are sad over Sandy Hook.

Swing and a miss.

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Originally Posted by AustinChief

My comparisons to Princess DI, the Shuttle Challenger, etc are all apt.

It was a shit analogy, as usual.

And also as usual, there is little on this forum that conservatives love to do more than waste endless posts defending shit analogies.

I'll leave you to it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AustinChief

It appears you think an epidemic is defined by media coverage and histrionics not by data.

I've cited my data. We kill people with our guns at rates unheardof in the Western world.

It's horrifying, and absolutely must be addressed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AustinChief

I gave a solid metric for when I would call gun violence an epidemic...

Yeah, you've planted your flag in the ground, but you have not defended why that should be where the flag belongs.

Which is why I asked.

And... I'm still waiting on an answer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AustinChief

No, I don't back any such thing... because it doesn't ****ing happen and you are a ****ing tin foil hat wearing nutjob for thinking it does.

It's widely reported that it does happen, from Slate to the Times to Forbes to the AMA itself. The NRA stifles research on gun violence. This is not remotely disputed by anybody outside of the rightwing circle jerk.

Which one, exactly, FOP?
Your "arguments" largely parrot party line rhetoric and show no knowledge of the subject of guns, their function or uses.

NAPO is probably the one I've read/heard from the most.

Testimonies before Congress, various press releases, and the odd interview I'll catch on CSPAN or NPR every other year or so. They're being consulted as a part of Biden's emergency gun control committee.

The policy proposals they push may or may not match up with the DNP, that is of no concern to me.

EVERY time you post this, it's pretty obvious that you are conceding that you are too ****ing stupid to respond with substance.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Direckshun

It was a shit analogy, as usual.

And also as usual, there is little on this forum that conservatives love to do more than waste endless posts defending shit analogies.

I'll leave you to it.

Once again, you shy away from the topic and instead pretend the analogy is bad. you have yet to explain AT ALL why it is a bad analogy. As a matter of fact, you haven't addressed the topic of why something being well known qualifies it as an epidemic. That is a position you unequivocally stated twice now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Direckshun

I've cited my data. We kill people with our guns at rates unheardof in the Western world.

It's horrifying, and absolutely must be addressed.

And yet again you don't ANSWER THE ****ING QUESTION. You claim gun violence is an "epidemic" yet you won;t tell us what qualifies it as such besides saying "it's bad ... people are sad!" Tell us at what level of reduction will it no longer be an epidemic? Obviously .0037% is too high for you, explain what is acceptable to no longer call it an epidemic.

ANSWER THE QUESTION YOU COWARDLY WEASEL

Quote:

Originally Posted by Direckshun

Yeah, you've planted your flag in the ground, but you have not defended why that should be where the flag belongs.

Which is why I asked.

And... I'm still waiting on an answer.

No you lying sack of shit. You ASKED ME what would it take for me to call it an epidemic. I picked a metric that made sense to me. YOU on the other hand are too much of a ****ing coward to put one out there at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Direckshun

It's widely reported that it does happen, from Slate to the Times to Forbes to the AMA itself. The NRA stifles research on gun violence. This is not remotely disputed by anybody outside of the rightwing circle jerk.

Those are complaints by people just like you. I can show you article after article "reporting" that Obama isn't an American citizen. Since it is "widely" reported it must be true!!!!! So don;t you think for a second that anyone but your left wing libtard circle jerk are buying this tinfoil conspiracy nonsense.

If the argument you're attempting to make is that all guns are as dangerous as semiautos, you're in left field.

and once again you are showing everyone how A)uninformed you are B)incapable of learning from all the info posted here so far.

Your post CLEARLY demonstrated that you haven't learned a ****ing thing about what an "assault" weapon really is. You stated...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Direckshun

I would argue against assault weapons because of their capacity for death, not their existence in any particular tragedy.

and I responded trying to illustrate YET AGAIN that the term "assault weapon" refers to mostly cosmetic features and those same weapons are no more deadly than their sport equivalents. But you apparently are too ****ing stupid to follow along... yet again.

Hey Direckshun answer this question with a solid measurable equation or answer or whatever you want to call it. Your answer about how people are feeling or how they are emotional or however you stated it is not a way to measure and you have sidestepped the question multiple times. Just answer the question.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AustinChief

I gave a solid metric for when I would call gun violence an epidemic... please offer me YOUR definition. You have dodged and weaseled on it so far and have yet to offer anything remotely resembling an answer.

I want to give you the definition of what an epidemic is:
An epidemic (from the Greek: epi upon; demos, people) is usually defined as a large-scale, temporary increase in the occurrence of a disease in a community or region which is clearly in excess of normal expectancy.

I don't know the statistics about gun violence but has it spiked recently? If so you still need to give a solid answer on how much of a spike would make it an epidemic.

Emotions have spiked about the killings so we might actually make the case that the spike in emotions is an epidemic. We should stop all the emotions.